110 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY CSS; but there are always other solutions. To style that heading two, it might just be better to add a class to it in your XHTML when it appears before paragraphs (if there is something structurally special about the heading two in that situation). Universal Selector One fi nal selector worth mentioning is the universal selector, * , some- times called the wildcard selector. Used by itself, it will style all ele- ments on the page; for example, * { color: green; } will style all text on the page to make it appear green. (However, be- cause color is inherited, it is generally better to set it using the body element selector.) For both class and ID selectors, the wildcard selector is implied. That is, there is no difference between .warning { color: red; } and *.warning { color: red; } Figure 10.4. Using the child selector, only the fi rst children of this list appear without bullets; more deeply nested lists still have their bullets. PRESENTATION AND DESIGN 111 The wildcard selector is at its most useful in relationship selectors. For example, if a page contained the following XHTML: <p> This is <strong>an example</strong> of <a href="example.htm">styling the text in <strong>this strong tag</strong></a> <em>as well as <strong>this strong tag</strong></em>. </p> only the fi rst <strong> tag (marking “an example”) is a child of <p> . The other two are children of other tags ( <a> and <em> ). To style the strong tags that aren’t children of <p> , use the wildcard selector: p * strong { /*Style information*/ } That would style all strong tags that are grandchildren of paragraphs: meaning, there must be one or more descendant elements between p and strong for this style to be applied. We could also use the child selector, rather than the descendant selector, for more specifi c parent- child relationships (e.g., that only one element appears between p and strong ): p > * > strong { /*Style information*/ } However, in those two cases, both selectors would apply the same styles to the XHTML above. Combining Selectors You can write selectors as descriptively and specifi cally as you like, so long as they match actual familial relationships and structural com- ponents in your XHTML. A match is what triggers a Web browser to apply the style. For example, to style a paragraph that is an adjacent sibling of a heading-two tag that is a child of <div id="content"> , provided that div#content is not a child of the body tag, the CSS selector would look like: body * div#content > h2 + p { /*Style information*/ } However, you’ll probably be relieved to know that it’s rare to have to write such complicated selectors. Rare, but possible. (See the “Selectors 112 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY and Specifi city” sidebar above, which will be useful knowledge if you have to write complex selectors.) Grouping Selectors There are times when you might want multiple structural features in your XHTML to be styled the same way; for example, both the <b> (bold) and <strong> tag might be styled as bold by your CSS. The long way to do that would be to write two separate style declarations: b { font-weight: bold; } strong { font-weight: bold; } But by using the comma, both selectors can be styled together. The comma enables designers to style many additional elements to appear in bold, such as all of the headings: b, strong, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-weight: bold; } Then, any distinct styles for a given selector could be handled by ad- ditional selectors in the same style sheet; for example, h1 has already been styled bold, but to make it purple (as well as bold) requires only another style declaration that contains only the color property: h1 { color: purple; } /*Already made bold above.*/ Pseudo-Class Selectors CSS provides fi ve special pseudo-class selectors, which are most often used for styling link text appearing inside the <a> tag: • :link styles a link in its unvisited state • :visited styles a link that has been visited • :hover styles a link that is being moused over, and should usu- ally be combined with • :focus , which styles a link that has been, for example, tabbed to by a keyboard • :active styles a link during the brief moment that it has been activated by a mouse click or pressing the Return key on the keyboard PRESENTATION AND DESIGN 113 So to make links green and no underline, hovered/active links under- lined and green, and visited links red, a style sheet might have a cluster of styles like: a,a:link { color: green; text-decoration: none; } a:visited { color: red; } a:hover,a:active { text-decoration: underline; } :hover and :focus also work on XHTML elements in forms for en- tering user information. COMMON CSS PROPERTIES AND VALUES There are hundreds of properties in CSS for designing the look of XHTML pages. References at HTML Dog 1 or Sitepoint 2 are essential to have on hand as you write CSS; but here are some of the more common properties to get you started, once you’ve begun to design your site. Fonts and Text A basic capability of CSS is styling text. CSS properties enable you to change fonts and font sizes, as well as setting styles such as bold, italic, and color. You can also set the amount of space between lines of text. • font-family : The font-family property takes a list of fonts; the Web browser will keep moving through the list until it fi nds a match on the user’s system. If no match is found, it will use whatever it has to match the generic font style mentioned at the end of the list. For example, if the style is font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; the Web browser will display Times New Roman (which is placed in quotation marks because of the spaces in the font’s name, but place the comma outside the quotation marks); if the computer the browser is running on does not have Times New Roman but does have Times, it will use Times; if it doesn’t have Times either, it will display whatever serif font is available on the system. For accessibility purposes, always be sure to specify a generic font alternative at the end of all lists of fonts: serif , 114 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY sans-serif , or monospace . You can fi nd a current list of commonly available fonts at this book’s companion Web site, http://sustainablewebdesign.com/book/ . • font-size : Font sizes can be set in a number of different units; points ( pt ) are used for print style sheets. Screen style sheets can use keywords, such as small , medium , and large ; pixels ( px ); percentages ( % ); or ems ( em ). • font-weight : Font weight can be specifi ed as a number in multiples of 100, but is more often specifi ed as bold , which makes the font appear bold, or normal , which makes the font appear normal (not bold). Normal is often used to reset a bold style inherited from another selector; if the strong tag, by itself, is set to bold, strong { font-weight: bold; } , but you don’t want bold on strong inside of an anchor tag, you’d write: a strong { font-weight: normal; } • font-style : Font style is usually either set to italic , for italics, or normal for nonitalic text. • color : The color property specifi es text color. You can write color keywords like those found in small boxes of crayons (e.g., red , blue , or green ). To gain better control over color, write the hexadecimal number for a color (e.g., #FFFFFF for white) or the RGB value using rgb(255,255,255) , which would also produce white. • line-height : Line height can be expressed as numbers without a unit; for example, line-height: 1.5; makes text one-and-a-half-spaced, line-height: 2; makes text double-spaced. You can also use pixel units, although that may cause problems if a user tries to resize the text on your site. • text-indent : To indent the fi rst line of text, use the text- indent property and a value in pixels or ems. To mimic a hanging indent (see Figure 10.5), run a negative number for text- indent and then the same but positive value for padding-left . For example, ul.citation li { text-indent: -50px; padding-left: 50px; } PRESENTATION AND DESIGN 115 Figure 10.5. Example of a hanging indent on a paragraph at the bottom of the screen; ordinarily, references or works cited should be in list items in ordered or unordered lists. Boxes: Borders, Padding, and Margin Block level elements—such as headings, paragraphs, lists, list items, and divisions—are by default displayed as boxes; that is, they are as tall as the content they contain, but block-level elements always take up the entire width of the screen regardless of their content. Although we will look more closely at the CSS box model in Chapter 17, for now it’s important to know that border and padding will add to the size of a box whose width or height you specify, while margin will move the box away from other elements on the page, or from the edge of the browser window. • border : Border is a shorthand property for specifying the width, style, and color of a border. To set only the borders of one edge, use border-top , border-right , border- bottom , or border-left . • padding : Padding increases the distance between the content in an element and the edge of the element. Padding can take a single value to add the same amount of padding to all sides of 116 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY the content, or it can take four values in “trouble” order: Top Right Bottom Left (TRBL). • margin : Margin increases the distance between the element and other elements on your page, or from the edge of the browser viewport. Without a background color or background image, margin and padding appear to do the same thing (in- creased space), but margins are transparent. • height : It is possible to set the height on an element. This is usually done in image replacement situations (see Chapters 14 and 17). The problem with height is that some browsers will maintain the height you specify, even if the content is longer/ taller, whereas other browsers will expand the height to fi t the content. • width : By contrast, width is specifi ed quite often, especially to help build page layouts. It is usually best practice to set widths on a containing division or ordered or unordered list, rather COLOR AND CSS There are three common methods to specify colors in CSS, whether you are col- oring text, a background, or a border. The fi rst method is to use color keywords, which give you very limited con- trol of color; they are like small boxes of crayons, allowing you to specify red, blue, yellow, green, and other basic colors in your CSS. The second method is to use hexadecimal numbers for red, green, and blue (RGB) color values. This method works very well across operating systems and Web browsers; a hexadecimal value is made up of six hexadecimal, or hex, num- bers. (Hex numbers run 0–9 and continue A–F.) The fi rst two numbers are the red value, the second two the green value, and the third two are the blue value. So to set a color to the brightest purple (red and blue), a hex value of #FF00FF would be required. A Google search for hexadecimal color palette will turn up dozens of pages that show the hex values for colors; you will also see a 216-color “Web-safe” palette. Designers used to be restricted to those 216 colors, but can now use any of the millions of color combinations enabled by hex colors. The third method, which is supported in all contemporary browsers, is to specify RGB color in decimal numbers (0 to 255); instead of using the hash (#) as on hex numbers, RGB requires this form: rgb(255,0,255); PRESENTATION AND DESIGN 117 than individual elements. As with height, elements that have their width specifi ed will add any padding to the total width. So for example, ul#navigation { width: 200px; padding: 20px; } will result in the navigation appearing 240 pixels wide (200 width + 20 left padding + 20 right padding = 240). Layout and Positioning The most advanced use of CSS is to create entire page layouts, which were once created with HTML tables. CSS layouts are much more fl ex- ible than tables, because they are layered over a page’s structure—not part of it, as tables were. Chapter 17 looks at building CSS layouts using these properties: • position : There are three common values for positioning elements: static , which is the default position of elements as they appear in source order and therefore the document fl ow; absolute , which removes an item from the document fl ow; and relative , which is usually specifi ed for setting a positioning context other than the whole browser window for absolutely positioned items. • top , right , bottom , left : Each of these four values can place an absolute- or relative-positioned element a certain distance from the top, right, bottom, or left of either the browser window or its positioning context. Negative values can also be used, sometimes to the effect of moving things off screen (such as a navigation intended for users of screen readers). • fl oat : Some Web sites use fl oats to create their layouts; how- ever, positioning is a much better alternative. But fl oats do come in handy for some forms of horizontal navigation bars, or when you have images or other media that you want other content to fl ow around. 118 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY • display : Display is a versatile property for setting how and whether an item displays. display: none; causes the item to disappear from view (potentially also to assistive technolo- gies, which may be an accessibility issue). display: block; causes an item to appear as a block element, while display: inline; will make an item appear like an inline element, such as <strong> or <em> usually appear. Design Images and Textures Background colors help you to add visual interest to your pages. Design images let you put the fi nishing touches on a design. But unlike images loaded in the XHTML <img /> tag, CSS background images keep de- sign images independent of your page content; redesigning your site, even its design images, is just a matter of changing your CSS. • background-color : Like color , background-color can be specifi ed using color keywords, hexadecimal numbers, or the RGB numbers. You can specify a background color on any ele- ment, as well as <body> and even <html> to set a background color for your entire page. Just be sure you have high enough contrast between your text and background to keep your pages readable (see Chapter 6). • background-image : You can also specify a background image on any element; for background images that are textures suit- able for appearing behind text, it’s also a good idea to specify a similar background color to the image, so as to keep text read- able in the absence of images, or while the image loads. • background-repeat : By default, background images tile hor- izontally and vertically to fi ll an entire element. However, you can set background-repeat: no-repeat; for an image to appear only once, or to background-repeat: repeat-x; to tile horizontally, or background-repeat: repeat-y; to tile only vertically. • background : You can also use the shorthand background property; to set only a color, specify the color: background: green; . To specify a background image (and a color for im- ageless devices), the shorthand is background: green url PRESENTATION AND DESIGN 119 ('tiled-leaves.jpg'); . Again, be sure to have a CSS reference nearby, especially for shorthand properties like background and border . NEXT STEPS Now that you’ve had an introduction to CSS and have a list of some (but certainly not all) of CSS’s properties, it will be easier to see how both XHTML and CSS can be used to build different parts of your pages: the branding, navigation, content, and so on. To get started, we will get to work with the Rapid Prototyping Kit (RPK) and, in Chapter 12, explore writing with source in a text editor. NOTES 1 . HTML Dog, "CSS Properties," http://htmldog.com/reference/ cssproperties/ 2 . SitePoint, “SitePoint CSS Reference,” http://reference.sitepoint .com/css [...]... Rather than trying to draft the perfect site before going live with it, it’s better to get something together that works basically the way you want it to Then you 122 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY can devote yourself to the site’s ongoing improvement and expansion over time As Chapter 3 urged, have some content on hand and ideas in mind as you begin to rapidly prototype your Web site The best... as discussed in Chapters 16 and 18 • Set up your basic metadata, branding and rough navigation Edit the prototype.htm file according to the guidance in the metadata, branding, and navigation chapters (Chapters 13, 14, and 15) and save it as my-prototype.htm so that you can 130 • • • • • • HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY create pages based on your own starter page that has most of your shared... from view And that means that, with even a little bit 134 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY Figure 12.1 The Notepad++ editor, open and empty of source literacy, you have maximum control over your pages More important, when something is wrong with one of your pages, you can be certain that it’s something you can fix ONE PAGE, MANY VIEWS To understand why someone would want to roll back to a piece... to rethink your strategy One alternative to that use of the tag is to add a class to the paragraph, like and then in the CSS specify p.important { font-weight: bold; } Don’t forget to remove the unnecessary tags from your markup, though 132 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY • Think about the general, then move to the specific The advice above suggests to. .. program in origin, there are versions available for Linux and Mac, too (Because I use the RPK in my own Web design work, I frequently make subtle improvements to it The companion site at http://sus tainablewebdesign.com/book/ notes any changes, although the 124 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY Figure 11.1 You can browse the RPK’s files on the Web; this is a view of the contents of the htdocs/ folder... latest and best approaches to Web design) NEXT STEPS To build and edit your pages with the RPK requires only a simple text editor, which the next chapter discusses If you’re comfortable working with a text editor, you may want to skip ahead to Chapter 13 NOTES 1 Eric S Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, revised and expanded ed (Sebastopol,... image to go, and you had to slide things around in order to get the picture to look the way it’s supposed to Use an image editor to build in textures and background images, and finalize dimensions, particularly widths, for the different elements on your page This is where you work to really 131 RAPID PROTOTYPING build the look and feel of your pages Once you know you are able to get your page elements to. .. aloud to a low-vision user (see Figure 11.2) For example, it may surprise you that the navigation appears so far down in the source order of the page After all, most Web sites feature their navigation areas near the top of the page With CSS positioning, 126 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY Figure 11.2 A part of prototype.htm visible in the Notepad++ editor, revealing the file’s source order however,... development environments The pages that WYSIWYGs spit out may not be standards-compliant, lightweight, or easily revised, but they are pages But handwritten, standards-compliant pages can be written quickly, too, and edited and revised even more quickly, which is why I have created the RPK: a collection of files and folders to help you build rapid prototypes for your Web site These files and folders will help... a Web browser (Figure 11.4) It gets rid of all the margin Figure 11.3 This is what prototype.htm looks like without any styles of its own, and therefore styled by the Firefox’s default CSS styles Figure 11.4 The same page as Figure 11.3, but with the Reset CSS in place 128 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY and padding around elements, removes all of the font sizes on the different headings, and . the “Selectors 112 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY and Specifi city” sidebar above, which will be useful knowledge if you have to write complex selectors.) Grouping Selectors There. trying to draft the perfect site before going live with it, it’s better to get some- thing together that works basically the way you want it to. Then you 122 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY can. After all, most Web sites feature their navigation areas near the top of the page. With CSS positioning, 126 HOW TO DESIGN AND WRITE WEB PAGES TODAY however, it is possible to place the navigation